A season in one drawer

An original description of an invented collection of gloves.

The drawer smelled faintly of damp wool, although the gloves were dry. They lay in pairs that had ceased to match: one stretched at the wrist, one faded across the knuckles, one carrying a small, stiff patch of glue.

At the back was a child's mitten no longer large enough for anyone in the house. Its thumb stuck out at a determined angle. Beside it, a leather glove had folded along the lines of a hand that was not there. The creases looked too particular to belong to an empty object.

I was searching for a pair to wear, not for a record of winters. Yet the drawer kept offering evidence of other days: a repaired seam, a name written inside a cuff, a thread of silver tinsel caught in a woollen finger. I found two usable gloves of different colours and closed the drawer before the cold in the hallway could persuade me to keep looking.

How does the writer make the gloves suggest the people and occasions connected with them?